Ibn Tufayl's Hayy ibn Yaqzan and Autodidactic Reason

Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl (c. 1105–1185), born near Granada in the town of Guadix, served as physician and adviser to the Almohad caliph Abu Ya'qub Yusuf, and it was in this capacity, according to Averroes's own later testimony as reported by the biographer al-Marrakushi, that Ibn Tufayl introduced the younger Averroes to the caliph's court around 1169 and reportedly encouraged him to undertake his systematic commentaries on Aristotle — making Ibn Tufayl a crucial institutional link between successive generations of Andalusian philosophy under Almohad patronage. His sole surviving philosophical work, Hayy ibn Yaqzan (The Living, Son of the Watchful, composed sometime before 1185), takes its title and its protagonist's name from an earlier allegorical narrative by Avicenna, but Ibn Tufayl reworks the premise into an entirely original philosophical thought experiment cast in the form of a novel, generally regarded as one of the earliest philosophical novels in world literature.